The Last Hard Men - Brian Garfield [61]
“Yes, sir.”
“If I can get Susan away, that’s were I’ll take her. If we don’t appear by sunrise you’ll have to use your own judgment.” He turned and grasped Hal’s elbow. “When you come back across, swing wide and take it very slow. You don’t want to fall into any traps. Better leave Weed over there—he’d only clutter things up, and we need the horse more than we need him.”
“I don’t know—what if nobody comes across him? He could die out there, tied up.”
“Let him.” Burgade tightened his grip on Hals arm. “Our lives are more important than his. Important to Susan. I don’t care if Weed lives or dies.”
Hal shook his head slowly. “I know he’s asked for it. But just the same—”
“We’ll pick him up if we can.”
He felt Hal loosen up; he dropped his hand away. Hal said, “I guess I know, you’re right, sir, but it’s a hell of a thing to have to do.”
“I know.”
Hal’s eyes came up. “Look, you be careful too.”
“I don’t intend to let them get at me until I’ve finished what we came here to do.”
“Susan’s going to need you, sir. It may not matter to you if they kill you in the end. But it matters to her. You understand what I’m saying?”
Burgade turned away. “Let’s get Weed on his horse.”
He picked a spot with care. At first he thought of climbing a tree to get a better command of the meadow. But he was too weak. And even if he could get himself up into one of the oaks, he’d be lucky to get down again without snapping his brittle bones.
He chose a fallen dead tree just inside the edge of the forest. Sat down on the deadfall trunk and arranged his rifle and field glasses at hand. From here he could see the whole meadow.
After the moon came up he fixed his field glasses on the camp and kept watch through the ticking silence of the night. There was always the chance Provo would decide to move.
He kept thinking about what Hal had said. From the beginning of the chase he had resigned himself; he had not expected to come out alive. He hadn’t much cared. They could have his old used-up hide, if that was the price of Susans life. But there was a chance Hal was right: if this thing hadn’t broken her, destroyed her beyond repair, it had come close. She would need gentle patience, protective love. His own death might mean nothing to him; to her it might be the final injury, and too much for her gentle spirit to accept all at once.
There had been nothing beyond Susan’s rescue and vengeance upon Provo. An old man, fit for nothing but a slow bitter draining of final years in the Pioneers’ Home—guttering out, in the end, like the noxious stub of a used-up candle. It occurred to him that a part of him had wanted to end it clean, up here in the high country that was unchanged from forty years ago: to make a last valiant fight of it, take Provo with him, go out in a hysterical blaze of glorious violence: a far more fitting finish for Sam Burgade. Storybook ending, high tragedy.
An indulgence, he saw now. A cheap poetic fantasy. An old man’s pathetic dream, images of William S. Hart meeting a Shakespearean death in the last reel.
A corner of his vanity resented Hal’s wisdom. Hal, clear-eyed and sensible, had destroyed the dream.
But Hal had replaced it with something important. She’ll need me, he thought. The wonder of it made his old hands steady, made his jaw creep forward to lie in a hard line. She’ll need me.
How long had it been since anybody had needed Sam Burgade?
He sat there for hours, shifting his buttocks on the hard wood. Wind-stirred leaves made moving shadows along the moonlit ground. He kept checking his watch at close intervals and when it went past midnight he began to hear the beat of his own heart. The light seemed to grow brighter, every tiny sound louder. He played the field glasses over the pale silver meadow and his eyeballs seemed to scrape the sockets.
He’d told Hal half past midnight. Five minutes ahead of the appointed moment he picked up the .06 Springfield and jacked the bolt halfway open to make sure a cartridge was chambered in the breech. He snicked the safety off and hunched